


Say You'll Be There

by callunavulgari



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s03e22 Infantino Street, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 10:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10943067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: Barry swallows, fingers tangling with hers, and says, “Storms make me think of him.”





	Say You'll Be There

**Author's Note:**

> While I was driving home, a cover of [Say You'll Be There](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSu-PKTIhuA) showed up on my playlist. Combine that with the heavy feel of an oncoming storm, the lightning in the distance, and that stuffy feeling between your ears that you have when the allergy pills aren't doing their job well enough and you've got the exact setting that was going on when I realized that I wanted to write Iris and Barry 'talking' about Barry's lingering, no-good-bad-feelings about Eobard Thawne.
> 
> And by talking I mean refusing to say more than a sentence about it, but thinking a lot.

The air outside is heavy, oppressive, so bloated with humidity that it feels like a weight pressing down on Barry’s lungs. Thunder rumbles ominously in the distance, and as Barry watches, lightning crackles across the sky.

A neighbor’s wind chime tinkles on one of the porches below theirs - the light, clear ringing a welcome addition to the rhythmic creaking of Grandma Esther’s rocking chair. The last of the light has vanished over the horizon, leaving the sky a dark, starless canvas, hazy with light pollution and cloud cover.

Another fork of lightning illuminates the sky, licking at the edges of shadowy clouds. Barry watches curiously, tracing those edges with his eyes, there and gone again in a flash. He blinks, and the sky is dark again.

For a moment, he hears Thawne’s voice in his head, feels the palm of his hand against Barry’s skull.

 _Heat lightning_ , Thawne murmurs, breath hot on the curve of Barry’s ear.

The memory is sudden, visceral, the feel of fingers in his hair and a wide mouth slanted up against his lips. Barry can smell the storm on the air, feel the crackle of electricity in his veins, lighting him up from the inside.

Barry indulges himself, eyes closing against the warm tide of nostalgia, sweeping him under. With it comes sour-old grief, regret. Thawne’s lips touch his neck in the middle of another storm, and there’s a shiver in the air, one that Barry hadn’t recognized at the time.

Inside the apartment, Barry can hear keys scrape in a lock. The front door swings open quietly, closing again a moment later with a sound that's not quite a bang. There’s a crinkle of something - plastic bags - and then, “Barry?”

Barry hesitates, shaking the cobwebbed ghost of Thawne free of him, weighing the silence, the lightning, the creak of the rocking chair. For a moment, selfish as it may be, he doesn’t want to share it. This silence is his now, where nothing exists outside of his head. Just the creaking, tinkling, rumbling soundtrack of the oncoming storm and the ghosts in his head.

The moment he opens his mouth, she’ll join him, and then it’ll be real again.

Barry licks his lips and shakes his head. “Out here,” he calls, not turning to look as what sounds like several bags thump down onto the kitchen table, footsteps padding across the carpet towards him.

“Hey,” Iris murmurs, sliding easily into his lap with a warm smile and a quick kiss. She smells like flowers. “What are you doing out here?”

Barry taps his fingers against her wrist and wraps his free arm around her waist, holding her close. She’s warm, her hair damp from the rain that’s only just started to spatter the roof above them.

“Brooding,” he says, a humorless tick quirking up the corners of his mouth. She pinches his side, and he tears his eyes away from the sky to study her.

She’s wearing a new shade of lipstick, a pale fleshy color that goes well with the pastels of her outfit, and her eyeliner is smudged at the corner of one eye. He thumbs it off, her cheek cool against his palm, and her hand goes to cover his, trapping it against the curve of her jaw.

“No brooding,” she chides, her mouth twisting playfully. Her dark eyes are warm, loving, but there’s a sadness there. She hidden it well, but Barry’s known her for a very long time. She thinks that he doesn’t know that she’s given up, but he isn’t blind. He knows grief, and more importantly, he knows what grief looks like on Iris West. He’s seen the denial, the anger, the depression - and he now knows the face of acceptance.

She’s been getting her affairs in order, closing her laptop with the tabs of legal looking documents whenever he enters a room, smiling that distracting smile as if she thinks he won’t notice. He’s noticed.

“No brooding,” he assures her with a sigh, hugging her closer to him. He buries his nose in her hair and breathes her in, grounding himself in her.

When he pulls away, her eyes are tracking the sky, troubled.

“Which one of us were you thinking about?” she asks quietly, playing idly with his hair. He glances up at her, but she isn’t looking at him, her eyes full of lightning. Perceptive to a fault.

He shrugs, and that seems to be enough of an answer for her, because she sighs and huddles in close, burrowing against his chest. Rain has started to slap harder against the roof, but he can still hear chimes in the distance, the whistle of wind.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she smacks him gently.

“Don’t be,” she mutters, her voice muffled against his chest. “It’s not your fault.”

“It kind of is,” he tells her, and this time, she doesn’t reply. They’ve had this fight before, argued it to pieces, once until they were both sobbing wrecks. They’re both Joe’s kids, his stubbornness creeping in and taking root in their bones. They don’t know how to back down, neither of them, so they don’t talk about it. It's easier that way.

Iris thinks that Thawne isn’t his fault, and that it - that _he_ \- shouldn’t be held against Barry.

Barry thinks that Thawne is the reason that Eddie is dead. Iris should hold the fact that Barry’s still half in love with the man who killed her ex against him.

“Want to talk about it?” she offers, nosing her way into his clavicle.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, his eyes on the sky. He doesn’t want to talk about it - doesn’t want to talk about Thawne, about the ticking clock counting down the days til he’ll lose her, about how everyone he loves dies on him.

He’s cursed.

Mom dead. Dad dead. Thawne… complicated.

Caitlin evil.

 _Him_ evil, broken into a million pieces, every mean, terrible thought that Barry has made flesh. Barry wonders if he ever misses Thawne, if being fucked up enough that he’s willing to kill _Iris_ means that coming to terms with loving Thawne was easy.

No, he doesn’t want to talk about it.

If he talks about it, he’ll beg her not to leave him. They have a little over a day to save her, and here she is, worrying about him. He licks his lips and wonders if one day her ghost will haunt him like Thawne’s does, if certain things will forever have her fingerprints all over them, tainted and beloved at the same time.

Lightning flashes, the thunder immediately booming in its wake. He can’t hear the chime anymore over the roar of the storm, but he can hear her breathing slow and even against his throat. Feels her lips touch where Thawne’s had, all those storms ago.

Barry swallows, fingers tangling with hers, and says, “Storms make me think of him.”


End file.
